Marchand: Woods wins titles while rest of Tour cashes big paychecks

Published 8:00 pm, Sunday, May 6, 2007

Tiger Woods strolled up the 18th fairway headed for yet another PGA Tour victory on Sunday in Charlotte. Even with a sore knee and the absence of his 'A' game, Woods still made it look easy.

Like it or not, and most of the time I don't, this is a one-man Tour these days. One of the reasons is money.

Steve Stricker finished second on Sunday and made over $600,000. I'd be satisfied with that. I think Stricker is too. I'm sure Rory Sabbatini is content to walk away with $365,000 despite blowing the lead on Sunday.

When Tiger is at the top of the leaderboard, the mindset from everyone else is that they're playing for second. When that runner-up spot pays over a half-million dollars every week, there's certainly no shame in that.

The second reason is that Tiger has a completely different agenda than the rest of the Tour. It's not about making money. It's about winning majors and the magic number is 18. Woods is two-thirds of the way to Jack Nicklaus' mark of 18 career majors. I think there's no doubt that he'll do it, considering he has no competition to speak of on the PGA Tour - mentally or physically.

I get the impression that there's no urgency from the rest of the Tour to step up and challenge Woods. Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els, Retief Goosen, Vijay Singh and Sergio Garcia have shown flashes of domination. But none can sustain it long enough to make Tiger sweat.

Barring injury, Woods is going to finish his career with over 100 victories and 20 to 25 major titles. It could go higher if the rest of the field continues to fade in Woods' presence like they did on Sunday.